Is sharing your location really that good for your relationship?
This is what experts say
Sharing your live location can be super handy; how else would you find your friends at a festival? But within a relationship, it is a sensitive topic. Is it really useful to always be able to see where your partner is, or does it lead your relationship straight to the abyss? This is what experts say.
A practical solution
The main reason to share your location, according to therapist Nicole Saunders, is that in some cases it is simply easier to know where the other person is. “If your partner takes a walk before dinner, you can easily check his or her location and see that you have enough time to complete a quick task.” It prevents you from having to text every time to find out when your partner will be home. In the time you wait for a response, you could have already done a lot. Being able to check prevents frustration.
No trust
Relationship therapist Kurt Smith is more critical; he actually advises couples against sharing their location with each other. “In my experience with guiding couples, I find that it does not build trust, but rather suspicion – which leads to questions, doubts, and concerns.” If your partner turns out to be somewhere else than you thought, you start imagining all sorts of scenarios in your head while that might not be necessary at all. Therapist Kaitlin Kindman agrees. “It can be a means that increases distrust and anxiety about the safety of the relationship.”
To do or not to do?
So should you share your location with each other or not? To answer that question, it’s good to think about a few things. First: how is your trust in each other? If this is already a sensitive topic, sharing your locations will probably not improve that situation. Furthermore, it’s good to consider why you actually want to see where the other person is. Purely because it’s sometimes handy, or because you want to control each other? Option one is perfectly fine, but option two is a big red flag. Also important: you both need to want it. If your partner forces you, or vice versa, then there is an abuse of power and that is really a no-go. Basically, you can operate under one golden rule: if you think sharing your locations causes more problems than it solves, then it’s not for you.
Source: Huffpost
